Grace Cooper:
It’s intern season again! Time to give your interns the opportunity to gain experience working in a Congressional office by learning new skills and participating in staff responsibilities. Although this summer may not offer a normal Capitol Hill intern experience, there’s still plenty of valuable projects that interns can participate in and even lead completely remotely. Here are seven suggestions for useful projects that summer interns can complete independently, including how to set up your IQ account and start training.
Set Up Your IQ Account
To get set up in IQ, you’ll need to email support@IQServiceDesk.com with the subject line: IQ Installation Request. Tell us your 1) Member name 2) state and district 3) phone number 4) how we can help. In the meantime you can check out our intern resources page to sign up for training opportunities, watch elearning videos, and learn more about what Congressional staffers do in IQ.
Deactivate Old form letters
Have your intern help clean up your office’s IQ by deactivating old form letters. This is an easy, low-stakes project that will truly help your team and give your intern a chance to learn about navigating IQ. Just set criteria for which form letters should be deactivated (e.g., form letters that are more than 12 months old) and show your intern how to filter by date and mark a form letter as inactive using the dropdown on the right hand side of the page. For more information on how to use form letters, watch our elearning videos on message management in IQ.
Close Out Old Mail
Another great task for interns to help clean up IQ is to have them close out mail that is 12 months or older. Simply show them how to access open mail, filter by date, and mark as complete. To learn more about processing mail in IQ, check out our elearning videos on message management.
Set Up Auto-Assignments for Campaigns
Mail campaigns from large advocacy groups can make up a significant portion of an offices’ inbound mail. Have your intern help you out by assigning responses (i.e., an approved form letter) for specific campaigns, allowing IQ to automatically respond to those messages and auto-tag any future messages added to that campaign with the same response. Watch our elearning videos on message management to learn more.
Check Out the Advocacy Center
IQ’s Advocacy Center is a new feature in IQ that allows users to view all important advocacy campaign statistics in one location. Accessible under the messages big menu in IQ, the Advocacy Center is a central dashboard where staffers can see all active campaigns and easily take action on outstanding messages. Watch this elearning video to learn more about the IQ Advocacy Center.
Clean Up Old User Accounts
Have your interns clear out old user accounts by going to the admin menu, clicking on “Users and Groups,” and closing or suspending individual accounts so that they are no longer active. Be sure that your intern has the proper administrative permissions to conduct this task independently before getting started.
Set-Up Phone Scripts for Issue Codes
Another easy but vital task that any intern can do is setting up phone scripts for the appropriate issue codes. Issue codes are assigned to messages and form letters so that legislative staff can easily identify correspondence relating to certain topics. Have your intern match approved phone scripts with the corresponding issue code so that other staffers can easily contact constituents without having to locate the scripts each time they do so.
For more ideas on how summer interns can become IQ experts to help their fellow staffers remotely during their short time, visit our intern resources page for installation instructions, training opportunities, and common intern tasks in IQ.
